Chapter 13 #2
He grabs the lube again, squirts way too much on his fingers, like he’s not taking any chances, then he’s touching me—circling slowly around my hole. Just teasing the edge until my hips twitch, even though I’m trying to stay still. I’m tense as hell, every muscle locked.
Then he presses. One finger. Steady. Waiting for me to unclench before it slides in.
It feels…weird. Full. Not exactly painful, but strange as fuck. Like my body doesn’t know what to do with it. I suck in a breath, thighs shaking a little. He doesn’t rush, just keeps that one finger moving slow, in and out, curling a bit so I feel it press against the walls inside me.
“Breathe,” Colt says.
I breathe, forcing it. In through my nose. Out slow.
“Good boy. Don’t fight it. Let your body adjust.”
His words warm me, so I focus on his voice.
It takes longer than I want it to. I can feel the tension in me fighting what my brain is telling it—relax, trust him, he’s not going to hurt you—and the tension doesn’t believe my brain yet.
But Colt keeps his hand on my stomach and keeps talking, low and even, telling me I’m doing well, telling me to keep breathing, and eventually, the rigid line of my body starts to soften in increments.
I force myself to relax—or at least, fake it.
After a minute, the weirdness starts to dull.
He adds a second finger and that burns more.
It’s a sharp stretch that makes me gasp and arch off the bed.
My hands grab the sheets, and he stops moving, just holding his fingers there, letting me get used to it.
Then, he starts again—slow scissoring, twisting a little, stretching me wider, bit by bit.
“Good,” he mutters. “You’re doing so good—opening up for me.”
I don’t know why that makes my dick twitch harder, but it does.
He keeps going until he finds that spot, curling his fingers and dragging right over it. My whole body jerks, and a sound comes out of me that I’ve never made before—half moan, half choke. My cock leaks onto my stomach.
“There,” he says, voice lower now, rougher. “That’s it. That’s where I’m gonna fuck you stupid.”
He works me open for what feels like forever—adding more lube, more fingers when I can take it, until I’m not fighting anymore. Until the stretch just feels…full. Hot. Like I need something bigger.
When he finally pulls his fingers out, I clench around nothing, and it feels wrong. Empty. My hips lift a little without me meaning to.
He leans down close to my ear. “You’re ready—dripping for me. Tell me you want it.”
“I want it,” I rasp. My voice doesn’t even sound like mine.
He pushes both of my knees toward my chest, and I let him, hands gripping the backs of my thighs. I feel completely exposed, but I don’t look away.
He lines himself up, and the head of his cock presses against me—thick, blunt, slick.
He pushes in.
It burns. A lot. The stretch is way more than his fingers, and I go rigid, breath stuck in my chest. The piercing catches right inside, and holy shit, it’s like a ridge pressing on something that makes my vision spark.
He stops immediately, forehead dropping to mine. We’re both breathing hard, and his arms are shaking from holding himself still.
“Still with me?” he asks.
“Yeah. Just…give me a second.”
Whatever wall I’ve been holding up for twenty-three years—the one built out of expectation and performance and the careful management of who I’m allowed to be—doesn’t come down all at once.
It comes down the way it’s been coming down all summer—incrementally, one brick at a time.
And the feeling of it is terrifying and the most relief I have ever experienced in my life.
And I cannot separate those two things.
He doesn’t move, just stays there, letting my body figure it out. His piercing is sitting just inside of me, and every time he throbs, it sends jolts through me.
After a minute, I can breathe again. “Okay. Move.”
He starts slow—so fucking slow—watching my face the whole time. Every inch feels huge, and when that piercing drags over my prostate, I seize up, my whole body locking. A loud, broken sound rips out of me.
“There you are,” he breathes, voice wrecked. He does it again, watching me fall apart.
“Fuck.” I can’t even form a sentence. “How are you—”
“Stop thinking,” he says. Not asking, telling. “Just take it.”
I do.
I grab him—hands in his hair, fingers on his back, pulling him closer. He groans against my neck when I dig in, and that sound does something to me, making me clench around him harder.
We find a rhythm. Slow at first, then deeper. The burn fades, and what’s left is just heat, pressure, and that piercing hitting exactly where I need it. Every thrust builds something I can’t stop.
“Rhett, look at me when I’m fucking your tight asshole.”
I do. His eyes are wild.
“I’m—” My voice is gone. “I’m right there.”
The rhythm builds and my brain has completely vacated and what’s left is pure sensation.
The drag and press of him, the piercing finding that spot on every stroke now with a precision that’s going to ruin me permanently.
And the sounds coming out of my mouth aren’t sounds I have ever made, and I cannot make them stop.
My hand moves down between us and I wrap my fist around myself. Colt groans above me like the sight of it is doing something to him, and that sound alone almost finishes me.
“That’s it,” he says, rough and low. “Take what you need.”
I stroke myself in time with him and the dual sensation of it—his body moving inside mine, while my hand works my own cock—builds into something I have no words for.
It’s a pressure that starts at the base of my spine and radiates outward in every direction simultaneously.
My thighs are shaking. My free hand is fisted in the sheet.
Colt’s hips are losing their even rhythm now, his breath coming hard against my neck, his control finally fraying at the edges.
“Rhett. I’m—”
“Don’t stop,” I hear myself say. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He doesn’t stop.
When I come, it’s a blinding sensation that starts where he’s buried inside of me and whites out everything else.
My hand still moves through it, striping my own stomach with my release, and the sound I make echoes off the walls of this small room, and I don’t care.
I genuinely don’t care. That, in itself, is a revelation.
Colt follows me over the edge with my name in his mouth, and I feel it—the pulse of him finishing inside me.
We lie there in the dark, both of us catching our breath, his forehead against my shoulder, my hand still in his hair.
“You good?” Colt asks.
I stare at the ceiling. “Yeah,” I say. And mean it. “I’m good.”
He lifts his head to look at me, and there’s something in his expression that I don’t have a name for yet—open, unguarded, the armor completely off—and I realize I’m looking at the real Colt Dawson for the first time.
I don’t get a chance to do anything with that information, though.
Headlights sweep across the bedroom window.
I’m upright, my heart going from settling to slamming in the span of a single second. And then I’m scrambling for my jeans on the floor, my shirt, my belt. Every movement is mechanical and desperate. And hands that were completely steady thirty seconds ago suddenly can’t manage a belt buckle.
“Rhett.” Colt’s voice is flat.
“That’s Aria’s car. That’s … they’re back early.”
“Rhett, slow down.”
“I need to—we need to look like—” I yank my shirt on. “Do you have beer? Get beers. TV. Turn on the TV.”
“Hey.” He grabs my arm. “Hey. Look at me.”
I look at him. He’s pulled his jeans on, and his expression is complicated—calm on the surface, but something sharp and unhappy underneath it.
“We have thirty seconds. Get the fucking beers.”
He holds my gaze for one moment longer than what’s comfortable, then lets go of my arm and goes to the kitchen.
I carry the evidence of the last hour down the hall, in my hands, and drop onto the couch, grab the remote, find something on the television that doesn’t matter, and arrange myself into the posture of a man who has simply been watching TV on a Wednesday night.
Colt drops onto the far end of the couch and hands me a beer without looking at me. His jaw is set in a way I recognize and am going to have to deal with later.
The front door opens.
Aria comes in first, Matt behind her, both of them carrying the particular energy of people at the end of a long bar shift. Aria’s eyes move to the couch and land on me with a fraction of a second of surprise before her expression smooths.
“Rhett Thornwood,” she says, setting her bag down. “Didn’t know you were coming by.”
“Just hanging out,” I say. “Hope that’s alright.”
“Course it is.” She looks between us once, and I can’t read what she’s thinking. “Matt, I’m beat. Say good night.”
“Night, boys,” Matt says, already heading down the hall.
Aria follows him, then pauses at the hallway entrance, but doesn’t look back. “Don’t stay too late, Rhett. Early morning tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Their bedroom door closes.
The television fills the silence with something neither of us is watching. I can feel Colt’s eyes on the side of my face, but I don’t turn to meet them. I take a pull from the beer, set it on the coffee table, then stand up.
“Rhett.”
“I should head out.”
“Sit down.”
“It’s late.”
“Sit. Down.”
I don’t sit down. Instead, I grab my keys off the side table—where I left them when I came in—and move to the door. And I know, I know I should stay, and I know what leaving is going to cost me, but I can’t make my feet stop.
The door opens, and the night air hits me, warm and thick and smelling like summer and cut grass. I pull the door closed behind me and walk fast to my truck.
I hear the door open behind me.
“Rhett.”
I get to my truck, hand on the door.
“Don’t you dare get in that truck.”
I get in the truck.
I see him in the rearview mirror, standing in the driveway in the dark, hands at his sides, watching me go. He doesn’t chase me down the drive.
He just stands there and watches me leave.
And that image, Colt Dawson standing in the driveway in the dark, watching me drive away without chasing me, is somehow the worst thing that has happened all night.
I drive home with both hands on the wheel, every window down, the night air roaring through the cab, and I don’t think about the look on his face when the headlights came through the window.
I don’t think about the way his voice said my name in that room.
I don’t think about what his expression looked like when I walked out the door.
I don’t think about any of it.
Or at least, that’s what I tell myself repeatedly as I drive home.
I pull into the ranch and sit in the dark cab for a long time. The house is quiet. The barn is quiet. Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be, and I’m the only thing out of place.
I have been the only thing out of place my entire life, and I am so tired of it.
I go inside.
I lie down.
I stare at the water stain on the ceiling.
And I think about Colt standing in that driveway, not chasing me, which is the most devastating thing he has ever done.